Did you chum yourself?

First day- it was pretty tough meeting everyone, especially since everyone was already drunk when we arrived on the last flight, and I got “Oh my god, you sound like youre from landaaaan!” about three times, and “Are you from London?” “No, the south” “oh right, Cornwall?” “No...” pretty funny. Everyone seems really nice though and a fun bunch.

We had aquarium duty first; Mossel bay own a research aquarium where they free dive to collect various shark species and bring them in to study them, e.g. tonic immobility studies (this is a defence mechanism animals use, like beetles, where they basically become paralysed for a short period of time, but you can induce it by turning them on their backs [I do it to Alvin when he bites me!!!]). They only have a few sharks in there at the mo, two pyjama jackets (theyre awesome), two leopard sharks and a couple of others. We had to go look for crabs in rock pools to feed the octopus (I named him Sid), thank GAWD we didn’t find any because there was NO way in hell I was picking up a gross crab!!!! We came back empty bucketed, so then got to climb into the aquarium (it was RUDDY cold!!!) in order to rearrange all the massive and ridiculously heavy rocks (no second guesses as to who was the weakling) into 4 evenly sized caves for an experiment on shark grouping during storms. There were gross sea urchins and anenome’s all over them too which I was not happy about. I asked the field researcher if the sharks bite, and he said not generally but one time a leopard shark bit his finger (he did grab it and hold it upside down to be fair, I would have bitten him too!) and scraped all the skin off, so when the sharks started swimming around my bare toes I did squeal like a little piggy, all they said was “don’t wiggle them they’ll think it’s food!”, yeh thanks guys! None of them bit me and eventually I befriended the sharks and enjoyed them slithering around my legs, they weren’t slimy they were quite rough like sandpaper which was cool. Caves were built about an hour later, we were pretty tired, but then all the sharks decided to escape into a different tank after I had to stick my head into the gross aquarium water and barricade them in, they pushed it over!  I was not happy and my friendship was revoked.

In the afternoon we went dolphin watching from the shore for dolphin surveys, it was soul destroying, 2 hours of standing there with a monocular like a pirate and saw sweet naff all. Thankfully we were placed about 300 m away from the chum boat, all of whom on board also looked very bored from the lack of great whites despite their chumming effort (chumming=throwing sardine guts into the water). We lost all hope and suddenly this MASSIVE white shark did a full breach (jumps completely out of the water) into the air, it was incredible!!! It was about 10m away from the chum boat and it went for the dummy seal. It was amazing, I was very jealous of the people on the boat, I was squealing again when it happened though. And then we went home! Day 1 over.

Day 2- I was finally on chumming duty, so I clambered out of bed at 5.45 am (I know right!!!) and had to find a pair of gammy old boots for the boat, I later found out they made little water proof difference. We had to collect the chum and bait, which was two large tuna heads (I nearly vomited down myself at the sight) and loads of sardine bits soaked in a pool of blood, yummyyyyyy mm mmm really got me in the mood for breakfast! The smell never leaves you, trust me. We went out to the site and started our duties; I was on photography (for a while I couldn’t work out why I couldn’t see anything, turns out removing the lens cover helps). Natalie was chumming so basically crushing up the sardine bits to make a gooey bloody mush to chuck over the boat to entice the sharks in. About ten minutes passed, and suddenly all I heard was “whoa whoa, shark 9 o’clock”. I ran to the side of the boat. Suddenly, time stood still, it was the most surreal experience of my life. A dark shadow emerged from the depths and slowly started to come into crystal clear vision, swaying gracefully and rippling the water as it surfaced. It wasn’t this huge, fearsome, menacing creature that I expected, and I immediately gained so much respect and adoration for this animal. It wasn’t aggressive at all, merely curious and swam around the boat a few times. We recorded its markings and it disappeared. This was the first of many sightings, there was not a dull moment that morning. Ten sharks in total, which is pretty rare, varying in size from about 2 and a half metres, to over four metres (this doesn’t sound big but believe me, when its half the size of your boat, you are all swearing in disbelief of its sheer size, weight and power, right in front of your eyes).  Some are jet black, others can be a fairly pale grey. They also all had different personalities, some ignored the bait entirely and were just curious and exploring what was going on gently, others were a different story... The idea of the bait is to draw them to the surface so you can observe their markings and photograph their dorsal fin to identify them (there are over 300 in Mossel Bay alone), you don’t want them to actually eat it. One guy, who was actually pretty small, less than 2 ½ metres, made a real impact. They drew the bait in towards where I happened to be leaning over the bow, and all I saw was this huge open, ragged toothed mouth drawing towards me above the surface, only about 3 feet from me. He suddenly got very ticked off that we didn’t let him have the bait, turned on a sixpence and went for it, surprising us all. He grabbed it and jerked the guy holding the rope pretty ferociously, he was not letting us take it away from him and he was aaaaaangry. Not being able to hold him on his own, Andre ran to the bow and grabbed the rope as well. He was thrashing around something good, absolutely soaked me who was just stood there like a fat kid in a sweet shop unable to move with sheer excitement. He was rolling onto his belly and pulling the bait rope down as hard as he could, going at it from every angle. No second guesses as to who won!!! It was an absolutely life changing experience, being that close from something like that, and I will never forget it.  There will be plenty more exciting experiences to come since I’ll chum 3 times a week, but for now since I’ve rambled on enough, fin!